Osborne Overcoming Bad Breaks

BY SPENCER CAMPBELL
BRISTOL HERALD COURIER

The boy from Richlands, Va., had waited 13 years for this, sacrificing a shoulder blade and a wrist in the process. He’d battled bronchitis, and lost. He’d been among the best amateurs in the country, and couldn’t get a ride as a professional.

Finally, though, all the fractures and the coughing lungs and the relocations paid off in Istanbul, Turkey, more than 5,500 miles from his hometown.

In April, Southwest Virginia’s Zach Osborne won his first professional motocross championship at the Grand Prix of Turkey, becoming the first American to win an International Motorcycle Federation (FIM) championship in 10 years and the first U.S. national to triumph in the MX2-GP World Championship division.

During that run, Osborne whipped past advertisements touting the sponsors who had once turned their backs on him. He flew across the finish line and gave the crowd a slight pump of his left hand. Surrounded by Istanbul’s mosques, with their pointed domes, he listened to the playing of America’s National Anthem.

“That was definitely the best racing moment of my life,” Osborne said in a telephone interview. “It’s a definite boost of confidence. To get a win as a professional in any sort of motorsport is an awesome thing. Not so many people can say that.”

Many wondered if Osborne would ever carry the champion label.

Osborne’s path into motorsports didn’t take long. His father, Mark Osborne, was a drag racer who won six National Hot Rod Association titles. But Zach shied away from the dragsters, instead taking to his father’s other love: motocross.

Osborne began entering amateur races when he was six and won his first championship at eight. At 12, he moved to Austria for a year to develop bikes with motorcycle manufacturer KTM.

With phenom status firmly attached, Osborne turned pro at 16 and signed with Red Bull KTM’s motocross team. But Osborne struggled.

First, there came a nasty bout of bronchitis. And then he shattered his scapula, the bone comprising his shoulder blade, in an accident. Once that healed, he snapped his wrist in yet another crash. Once Osborne came back healthy, his bike simply didn’t have the power to compete on the U.S. circuit.

“Was it tough for me?” Mark Osborne asked. “It’s killer. ... it was very hard for me not to see him be the winner. Just like the guys who are winning nowadays, as amateurs he drove them into the ground.”

Just 18-years-old, Osborne was living in Anaheim, Calif., without a job. Fate, however, finally took its foot off his neck.

In his neighborhood coffee shop, Osborne struck up a friendship with Utag Yamaha’s team agent. Utag, which has been racing for more than two decades, competes in the IMF’s MX2-Grand Prix World Championships, a 15-round motocross tour that stops in 13 European countries.

Osborne traveled to England, where the team is based, for a tryout.

“We just thought, ‘OK, looks good in practice,’ ” team owner Steve Dixon said in a telephone interview. “Because I also tested a couple riders before, and they looked quick in practice in their style and aggression. But when it came to racing, they didn’t cut the mustard.”

Still, Dixon gave Osborne a shot, and the Richlands native joined the MX-2 tour in mid-June 2008. In only his third event, Osborne won the first heat of the Irish Grand Prix.

Dixon saw enough aggression, dedication and humility in Osborne in the final stages of 2008 to commit to the American rider full-time in 2009. Osborne rewarded his owner almost immediately. After his triumph in Turkey, Osborne’s fourth- and seventh-place finishes in the Netherlands moved him six points out of third place in the season standings.

“I have some really good guys around me right now,” Osborne said. “Me and my teammate did a lot of training over the winter in South Carolina and at Abingdon, at home, and we just put all the work in and everything’s going well.”

Or it was. In the circuit’s fifth race of the season, in Portugal, Osborne tumbled over a jump, chipping a piece of bone from his left wrist. He is currently back home in Whitely, England, undergoing hours of laser and hyperbaric rehabilitation per day.

Osborne and Dixon are optimistic that he will be back in the driver’s seat by the GP of Great Britain on May 31. And the now-20-year-old Osborne is confident that he can still make the top 5 in the season standings by the end of the year.

With his recent success, the American teams that once spurned Osborne have returned with offers. But Dixon wants him to stick around the UK for awhile, and that idea sounds tempting to Osborne and his father.

“I really want him to get that red plate,” Mark said, referring to the MX-2 championship trophy. “He really wants that bad for himself and I think he deserves to have that after all the hurdles – not roadblocks, but hurdles. He deserves something good.”

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